


Runs in the Family

by SophiaCatherine



Series: Neurodivergent DCTV [8]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Barry Allen has ADHD, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s05e01 Nora, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Light Angst, Nora West-Allen has ADHD, West-Allen Family Feels, overwhelmed Nora West-Allen, reaction fic, supportive Barry Allen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 11:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16283534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaCatherine/pseuds/SophiaCatherine
Summary: Speedsters with ADHD can get a little overwhelmed sometimes.





	Runs in the Family

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by [PinkLetterDay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLetterDay/pseuds/PinkLetterDay) \- thank you!

The time vault is soundproof, of course. And not a place where people just wander in and out. So, when Barry strays in there one day and finds Nora crying in a corner, he wishes she’d been somewhere he could have found her faster.

(He was just there to look at the—newspaper report.)

She’s curled up against the bumpy wall, head between her knees, sobbing.

It’s an awful sound.

His breath catches and he grips the edge of the door. Something in his chest twists with indecision and reticence and that damn _awkwardness_ he’s felt since she first hugged him. Even after the plane, even now that they’ve started to—connect, he doesn’t _know_ this girl.

And yet, he looks at her and knows she’s his daughter. The same way he’d recognise Joe’s laugh anywhere. The way he remembers his father’s scent when he hugged him. The way he knows the sound of Iris’s voice gently rousing him in the morning, even while he’s still drifting out of sleep.

“Hey,” he says, in a low, soothing voice, settling down next to her.

Nora looks up, startled. She runs a hand over her face, trying and failing to stem her tears, and for a moment he’s struck by how much she looks like him.

“Sorry,” she chokes out. Her head drops back to her knees a moment later.

Barry’s hand comes up to his forehead. He’s lost, staring at this kid— _his_ kid—who’s so uncannily familiar, who sounds like him when she infodumps and looks like Iris when she smiles, and yet who’s still a stranger to him.

Choosing the riskier road, as always, he reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. When she grips his hand back, it’s a wash of relief and—something else, warm and familiar in his chest.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she says, muffled. Her sobs, at least, have dried up into sniffles.

Barry runs his other hand through his hair. “How to do what, Nora?”

She raises her head from her knees to look at him. There’s fear in her eyes, a mirror image of his own after Flashpoint, and a thousand other times he’s been out of his depth and—at least for a while—out of hope. “Any of this,” she says, after a second, gesturing around herself with her hand. “I know all of you, so, _so_ well, and you don’t know me.” She sits up, pulls her knees to her chest, and a little light returns to her eyes. “I was in Cisco’s lab, helping him with the new meta alert he’s working on. You know, to replace the satellite. And I just started to feel, I don’t know, overwhelmed. And I got stressed and unfocused and—and it’s like half my coping strategies have just _gone_ …” She shakes her head helplessly.

“Coping—Oh.” A smile is forming against his will. This isn’t really the time, and he doesn’t want her to think he’s making fun of her. But she’s rubbing the back of her neck, stress and sadness competing in her eyes, and it’s like looking in a mirror. “Nora, do you have ADHD?”

“Duh,” she says, sniffling. “Like you.”

He laughs, despite himself. “And once again, I don’t _know_ that you know that, so could we just both pretend that this is new information? For me?” He shoots her a grin.

She breaks into a wry little smile. “Wow, Dad, you have ADHD too?”

 _Dad._ He hopes he doesn’t have too much of a visible reaction to that. To how strange it still feels, even as it’s slowly becoming more familiar.

She doesn’t seem to notice, though, and they share a muted laugh. She’s smiling again, and that’s all Barry wants. He’s known this kid for five minutes, and all he wants is to know that she’s safe and happy.

He knew, in his head, at least, that fatherhood would feel like this. He just didn’t expect it to appear fully-formed out of the speed force, in the form of a grown woman who is so like him and Iris, and already knows them. Briefly, he wonders if all parents experience something like this. Does every father look up one day and find that a whole _person_ has sped to a halt in front of them so—fast?

He doesn’t really feel like he’s her father yet, either. But she resonates at the same frequency as him, inexplicably, like she’s  _his_. And, really, he doesn’t know why any of this is surprising him. Why anything about his impossible life is a shock to him anymore.

Nora’s face has fallen again. “I have, though. Lost my coping strategies, I mean. I have these—routines, at home. Which is _here,_ but it’s _not_ …” She looks around the time vault, panic crossing her face again. “All my familiar faces and places... they’re strange now.” She raises a her fist to her mouth, and Barry’s heart clenches.

He shifts around, leaning back next to her against the wall. “I guess you never heard the story of what my mom said to me when I got diagnosed…” he starts, trailing off with a frown. Of course she hasn’t. She hasn’t heard any stories from him.

But she glances across at him, her eyes red but interested.

He takes that as a signal to continue. “I was nine years old. For a couple of weeks after my parents told me about the diagnosis, I was so pissed off. Being told I wasn’t normal? The worst. So for two weeks, I just stomped around the house, deeply offended.” He chuckles. It was far from funny at the time, but now he remembers being such a brat. “Poor Mom—I must have been a nightmare to live with.”

They share a smile of recognition, some universal understanding about parents and children.

“So, of course, to spite everyone I was _super_ ADHD for two weeks. I was normally such a good kid, pushed all that stuff down as much as I could, you know?”

She nods, with a wry look under raised eyebrows. Of course she knows.

“But I started just letting it all get on top of me,” Barry continues. “And then one day I came home from school in a horrible mood. I’d got so mad over something—” he waves vaguely, “not being able to concentrate on reading in an English class, I think. And Mom was just at the end of her rope, I guess. She sat me down and talked at me until I started talking back.”

He sits back and breathes deep, now that he _can_ breathe again, when talking about his mom. Now that he can remember her with more love than pain. He looks up, and Nora’s watching him, quiet but enthralled. Barry realises with a jolt that this is the first story about his mom that she’s ever heard straight from him, and he has to breathe a bit harder through the awful symmetry.

Barry looks away, just for a moment. He’s not going to get overwhelmed. Nora needs him, and that’s what matters right now.

He keeps talking, a little quieter now. “So she said, ‘Barry, you listen to me. I know sometimes everything feels really hard and you don’t want to deal with it. You’d rather run away from it all, right?’”

Nora huffs a little laugh of acknowledgement, and Barry nods at her.

“She said, ‘Whenever you want to scream about how hard it is, or cry and be held, you can come to me.’” He doesn’t care that there are tears in his eyes, the memory so strong that he feels like he could reach out and touch his mother. “And then she said, ‘You’re special. Everyone’s special, but you’re special in your own unique way. You ever forget that, you just come and let me remind you.’”

Nora’s gazing at him like he’s said something much more profound than a mom’s off-the-cuff bit of advice to a nine-year-old boy. There are tears in her eyes, too. He wants to hug her, so much, but right now he’s going to wait for her to take the lead.

She reaches out a hand to cover his, where it’s flat on the floor beside him. He takes her hand properly in his own, and holds on tight.

“I ran away,” she says, softly, looking down at their joined hands. “And I want to stay here—just for a bit, you know. But I feel like I’ve messed up. Like I’ve lost something.”

Barry shakes his head firmly. “You didn’t lose anything. You carry all your strengths with you.”

She reaches out to hug him, and he shifts so he can take her in his arms.

They’re quiet for a moment. It’s like the hush at the center of the speed force—the most motionless place in the universe.

Barry says, “What do you do when you’re overwhelmed, Nora?”

Nora whispers, into his chest, “I run.”

It was the answer Barry expected, but he needed to hear it from her. Pulling away, he stands up. He offers her his hand, and she takes it. She’s still sitting, though, an uncertain look in those brown eyes that are so like Iris’s.

Barry gives her hand a little tug and says, “Come on, then.”

Smiling, she takes it, and lets him pull her up from the floor.

And they run.

**Author's Note:**

> "Infodump" refers to a thing some neurodivergent people do, where we ramble about special interests or expert subjects. Barry does it, and Nora's already done a bit of it!
> 
> Usual disclaimer for ND fics: I have ADHD (and am autistic and a bunch of other things), but this fic is based (partly) on my own experiences of ADHD, which will not be the same as everyone's. It's also based on headcanons rooted in what we see in canon, of course, because not everything is about me. :D
> 
> Thanks for reading. I love comments!
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](https://sophiainspace.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/SophiaCatherin5).


End file.
